Community Tourism : History

History and background

Community Tourism as a brand name began in 1978 when Mrs. Diana McIntyre-Pike and the then Director of Tourism Mr. Desmond Henry decided to work together in creating a dynamic development with the communities in the central and south areas of Jamaica – mainly Mandeville and Treasure Beach. Previously, Mrs. Diana McIntyre-Pike’s family had always offered both local and international visitor community style vacations in their cottages in Negril and their guest houses in Savanna-la-mar from the 1940s.
This inspired McIntyre-Pike to introduce this when she worked at the Holiday Inn Resort Hotel in Montego Bay in 1973 and at the then Runaway Bay Hotel and Golf Club in 1974 where she created a Jamaica Chit Chat Session for their guests to make them aware of Jamaica’s heritage, culture and the lifestyle of the people. These sessions were successful and motivated many of the guests to discover Jamaica and enjoy community attractions. It was not then called community tourism but the concept of community tourism was being further developed. Her work motivated the Jamaica Tourist Board to offer her a two year German Scholarship to do further studies in hotel management and tourism.

When she returned from Germany in 1977, she declined many offers of jobs in the resort areas as she was committed to developing a tourism product with the community participating. She decided to join her parents at the Astra Country Inn and continue her work. Her late brother Gordon McIntyre and herself held many community meetings at the Astra to invite community persons to assist in participating in the planning of a product with the community.

In 1978, she met the then Director of Tourism, Mr. Desmond Henry who shared her vision and together they named it community tourism. Mr. Henry articulated it and assisted in defining how community tourism could be developed in Jamaica. The Astra Country Inn was chosen as the small hotel to market this new brand name ‘community tourism’ and the late Gordon McIntyre and a consultant called Howard Housen conducted a feasibility study on the south coast to determine if the communities wanted tourism and if so what type of tourism.

The results of this survey showed that the communities wanted a tourism that respected their life style and did not change it. It was then confirmed that community tourism was what they were looking at, and gave McIntyre-Pike and Henry the inspiration to move ahead with the programme.

During the 80s into the early 90s, both McIntyre-Pike, Henry, the late Gordon McIntyre of the Mandeville Hotel, the late Robert Sutton – Birdwatching expert from Marshalls Pen Great House, Charles Swaby pioneer of the Black River Tours, Stafford Haughton of Haughton’s Pharmacy and others, joined forces to create the Central and South Tourism Committee which later became the Central and South Tourism Organization (CESTO). CESTO hosted in association with the Astra Country Inn, monthly community tourism forums and encouraged community persons to participate in the further planning of community tourism through sub committees for attractions development, accommodation development and environmental protection programmes. These forums were well attended and most of the ideas offered from the community were incorporated in the planning process for community tourism.

Countrystyle was created as the marketing arm of CESTO by McIntyre-Pike & Henry to promote community tourism and won two awards at the JHTA’s JAPEX, for the best booth as they created a rural Porus stall with fruits and vegetables together with community representatives assisting with the marketing of the central and south area.

In 1994, McIntyre-Pike was invited by Mr. Lou d’Amore, President and Founder of the International Institute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) to make a presentation on her work in community tourism including the vision for the future at the 2nd Global Conference in Montreal which was highlighted as one of the 200 success stories at the conference. It was here that the international focus started with community tourism as there were representatives from over 70 countries, who were impressed with the brand name ‘community tourism’ and decided to develop it when they returned to their country.

Community tourism principles >>>